


Love is Pain (darling, let's hurt tonight)

by ToAStranger



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, M/M, Panic Attacks, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Thor: Ragnarok, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-10-31 15:06:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10901832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToAStranger/pseuds/ToAStranger
Summary: Tony had a mark.  Now he doesn't.Either way, it doesn't really matter.





	Love is Pain (darling, let's hurt tonight)

Maria and Howard had been soulmates.  They’d each had three little runes scrawled, black and sharp, on the insides of their right ankles.  

First was _wunjo_ .  The three lines composing it, sharp and sure and in terribly ironic juxtaposition against the merkstave of the same jagged _P_ that hung upside down on the other side of the inverted _sowilo_ sitting center.  

Howard had never put much thought into what the little marks meant until Maria.  And even then, he ultimately misinterpreted them.  He’d always read them as though he were reading a book, the sole of his foot the bottom binding, but Tony knew that Howard and Maria both read their runes backwards for the entirety of their lives.

What they thought was a ghost of a past they would move beyond-- _sorrow, strife, alienation_ \-- would ultimately be their future-- _intoxication, stultification, rage_.  

It takes a long time for Tony to come to terms with that.  That even though they were meant to be together, even though some big bad cosmic force out there said “it is law” and with a snap of their big dumb fingers made it so, his parents were more miserable after finding their soulmate than they had been before.  

And isn’t that a bitch?

The two people in the world most meant for each other were also doomed to make each other miserable for the rest of their bound lives.  Doomed to hurt each other in their dangerous love, in their toxic need for one another, nothing but pain and sorrow.

Howard and Maria Stark’s bond marks aren’t the only one’s Tony has ever seen-- aren’t even the longest ones; he’s seen entire epithets down the vertebrae of a smooth back; paragraphs on the backs of hands; two slim characters just under someone’s left ear, an apt and succinct _before_ and _after_ \-- but everything always comes back to Howard and Maria Stark for Tony.  

Tony’s own mark was a lonely one.  A singular, small _v_ at the center of his chest.  The _kenaz_ , dreadful and merkstave, a promise for nothing good and everything bad.  

He remembered his mom crying when she saw it, when he was seven or maybe eight, and knowing it would mean he would be alone-- or, at least, be without his marked-- until the end of his life.  That it reflected a life that would have no transition, no neat little _before_ or _after_ for Tony, just here.  Just now.  Just always.

Honestly, Tony figures he’s lucky.  Knowing that the bond his parents had shared ultimately ruined the brightness of their future.  Tarnished it.

So, yeah, he slept around with all of the other losers who only had one mark or maybe hadn’t found their marked yet or were hoping he was theirs.  He wasn’t shy about his mark.  If anything, he wore it like a badge-- _like a shield_ \-- and smiled bright for the cameras.

When he ended up with a _giant fucking hole_ in his chest, thirty years after deciding at the wobbly age of seven or maybe eight that he wouldn’t _care_ about his mark or that he would never-- _never_ , jesus, that’s a long time-- have a bonded, it did little to change his mind.  Now, instead of a shitty, no-good, very much awful mark on his chest, he had a _giant fucking hole_ ; which admittedly wasn’t great.  But then he’d filled that space with light, with the soft hum of the arc reactor, and yeah, okay, _fuck you_ big cosmic universe guy.  

Tony Stark would carry his own mark and no one else’s.  He would carry a mark of his own design.

 _Look at me now_.

And sure, it hurt sometimes, knowing that he really was alone now.  Alone forever.  Maybe hurt a little more, now, than when he’d been young and foolish and still hopeful.  

The pain doesn’t stop him from putting that suit on the first time, from trying to right all of the wrongs he’s let slide by in his blindness-- _instability, false hope;_ his rune had whispered all his life: _vulnerable, you’re vulnerable_ \-- and it doesn’t stop him from putting the suit on the second time.  Or the third.  Or the fourth.  Or the fifth.

Then, by the time he’s finally figured his shit out, it doesn’t matter what his mark meant or said or did.  What matters is what he’s doing.  What he’ll always do.  Press forward and onward.

A futurist.

For a while, that suits him just fine.  He’s never hoped to find his bonded in the first place, never felt any echo back from the void that crackpot hippy psychos claim they can feel in deep meditative states or when they’re so baked they mistake being toasted for a deep meditative state, and he’s _certainly_ never felt that pull in your gut that everyone and their mother claims to feel when their bonded is nearby.  Because he’s not supposed to--

_He’s broken.  He’s broken, he knows, he’s been broken since before his dad started ignoring him._

\--and that’s fine.

He hasn’t needed one before.  Why would he need one now?

But then, and of course there’s a fucking then, everything gets turned on its head.  There are enhanced at play, now, not just super spies or guys in souped up prosthetic armor.  Then there are _gods_ and _wormholes_ and _aliens_ pouring down out of the big blue sky.  He nearly _dies_.

Again.

Fuck, and okay, before the wormhole and the aliens and the nearly dying-- before all of that, there are gods.  One is a big beef stroganoff of a motherfucker.  Tall and intimidating and kind of a dick, but a funny one, the kind that Tony knows he’ll get along with.  Eventually.  

Then there’s the big guy’s brother, annoying little horned _twat_ of a motherfucker, and Tony’ll be damned if he doesn’t feel like he’d been punched right in the liver the second he touches down in Stuttgart after firing the repulsors at the guy.  He ignores it-- of course, if Tony’s good at anything, it’s ignoring big giant HEY, IDIOT, LOOK AT ME signs-- until he can’t ignore it anymore.

But by then, there’s the whole wormhole problem.  And hords of aliens problem.  And all six-foot-whatever of Loki has bodily thrown him through a window after Tony very subtly insulted his _staff_ problem.  And--

Well.  There’s a lot of generally _not good_ going on.

When it’s over, when all is said and done, Loki is still annoying but is now also a mass murderer instead of a casual one.  Tony has no foot to stand on, no desire to really, but even he can’t deny that he’d _felt_ Loki the moment the man put his hands on Tony.  He’d felt something _click_ , something fall into place that he’d never known was missing, and then he’d been tossed out of his penthouse like a piece of _fucking garbage_.

Which, yeah, stung.  

What he wouldn’t admit was that it stung a lot more knowing that Loki hadn’t felt it too.  That if he _had_ felt it, still threw Tony through a fucking window.  And Tony-- Hell, Tony doesn’t even know if Asgardians or gods or aliens or whatthefuckever even _had_ soulmates and marks like humans do.  

So he doesn’t press.  Doesn’t push.  Watches all seven-goddamn-feet of Loki and his surly big bro zip off at the speed of light with the help of the blue glowy Rubic’s cube of magic fuckery.  Doesn’t even bat an eye behind his stylish but affordable shades as he climbs into the car with Brucie at his side.

It is only later, much later and much too late, that the pain comes.  The agony of being ripped apart by space, by time, by worlds and stars and whatever else lay between them. 

Not long after that, there are the dreams.  Not just the nightmares about the void, the breech in the sky, but about the penthouse, about the push-me-motherfucker Big Red Button jail cell in the helicarrier, about Stuttgart and the Quinjet and the expanse of forest between them and the rest of the world.  He dreams about Loki, he dreams about himself, and he dreams about the both of them in all of those places.  

It’s always them; just them.  

At first, it’s just memories.  Flesh memories of fingers around his throat, of hissed words, of that prickle of _yes, touch me, yes_ upon first contact that had been terrifying and arousing and oh, yeah, _terrifying_ all at once.  But between the nightmares and the memories, something fresh begins to bloom.  Something new.  Like the code being rewritten real time in his head, dream VR, with surround sound and epic graphics.  

They don’t speak.  No, that would be too simple.  Too straightforward.  Tony’s dreams are not and have never been simple or straightforward, and there’s a reason he can’t sleep next to Pepper that sometimes has nothing to do with the horror of the void and everything to do with the guilt of sin and flesh.  

Even if it’s only ever just flashes--fingers on hips, around wrists, tracing the hollow of his throat; throaty laughter; a hand fisted in his hair, in his own; heat and heat and _heat_ \-- it is still enough to make Tony realize that maybe, just maybe, he and Pepper shouldn’t push their luck.  

Honestly, she sees it coming before he even tells her, after the Mandarin and Killian and keeping his reactor right where it belongs.  

After that, things get a little bit better for a while.  Maybe not great-- HYDRA inside of SHIELD, _yeesh--_ but better.  The team gets back together to track down the last of the snakey heads, sans Thor, who ends up literally crashing in not long after Tony makes them all commemorative Wonder Twin rings that _don’t_ actually combine to make much of anything but _are_ secretly tracers he can use to keep tabs on his little troublemakers.  They go to England to help with the clean-up, and Thor and his unnecessary eight pack are grateful.

They go out to celebrate after, end up at a pub in some nowhere part of London, Clint and Tony trying to drink Steve and Thor under the table but _fuck_ that’s not working _at all_.  Clint ends up getting sick and Nat has to take him away with Steve’s help, but Steve doesn’t really mind because he’s a giant saint.  Bruce is busy at the bar with Jane, picking her head for all of that space rock knowledge Tony has no clue what to do with most days, so Tony turns his focus on Thor.  

“You good, big guy?” he asks because Thor has been wearing a long face since before they even started drinking, which is honestly just way too sad for Tony to handle _sober_ let alone _drunk_.

Heaving out a heavy sigh, Thor shakes his head.  “I fear not, Tony.  I know you did not-- I know that you and the other Avengers only knew my brother a short while, and certainly not in the best light, but his sacrifice on the battlefield has left me… hollow.”

It takes a minute for Tony to get it.  He’s been drinking since three and it’s nearing three again, so he’s a little slow on the uptake, but when he gets it, he stops breathing.  

Thor frowns over at him.  “Tony?  Anthony?  Are you well?”

No.  He’s not.  He’s gonna pull a Clint.

“I’m gonna pull a Clint.”

He scrambles out of the cracked leather booth and nearly dive bombs when he trips over the leg of a chair, but he eventually makes it to the men’s restroom in time to empty his stomach into the toilet of one of the middle stalls.  He heaves until there is nothing left in him, hands cold, scalp prickling--

 _He should’ve known.  How had he not known?  How had he not felt it_?

\-- and he collapses against the dirty floor as his legs give in; give up.  

Eventually, the world stops spinning long enough for him to lull his head over against his own shoulder, curled around the base of the toilet like he’s praying to it.  He takes one breath, then another, and presses up from the ground on shaky legs.  He wobbles out of stall and over to the sink, rinsing first his mouth and then his face.  As he towels himself dry, he stares at himself in the mirror.

Under his shirt there’s the pale glow of light.  The arc reactor a constant hum back behind his molars.  Mark gone-- forever, forever gone-- and a big burning blue in its place.  His breath hiccups somewhere behind the reactor, and he presses a hand to it until it hurts.  Like he should hurt, knowing his stupid maybe-- _just a hunch, just a gut feeling--_ probably-- _I can taste him, I can taste him when I wake, I can taste the snow-_ -definitely-- _it’s his mark, I looked it up, of course I looked it up, it’s always been his mark, my mark was_ him _\--_  soulmate was dead.

Then, in the corner of the mirror, big block letters stand out harshly against all of the other graffiti: _fuck god and cum hard_.

Tony folds over at the middle, bends right in half, and laughs until he cries.

* * *

The dreams don’t stop.  He thought, for a while, that they had.  He ends up so lost in the nightmares that, for a long time, there is nothing beyond the fear and the sleepless nights.

Then, one night, he wakes up in a gilded room.  Everything is in hues of gold, bright and opalescent and nearly too much for Tony to handle.  He squints and hides his face against a pillow that is not his pillow but is a nice pillow anyways.  An arm snakes around his waist, pulls him back flush against a broad chest, and Tony isn’t surprised but he is shaken.

He thought these dreams would stop now.  

Instead, they take a turn.  It is as though, having realized he’s lost him completely, Tony’s mind finally gives up the ghost and gives in to the possibilities.  The maybes.  The might-have-beens.

It hurts.  It hurts too much, even with Loki’s mouth against his pulse, his hands on Tony’s hips-- and for the first time, Tony says something besides _harder faster more_.

“It hurts.”

Loki stops.  He pulls back and looks down at him, and he’s still just as wild and mad and fucking beautiful as the first time Tony saw him and loathed him in Stuttgart.  It feels as though it has been months, and it probably has because Tony hasn’t been dreaming-- hasn’t been _sleeping_ for fear that he might dream-- but he’s been having nightmares more and more, and Loki’s hands grip him that much tighter for it the same way Tony’s do.

He splays a big hand over the arc reactor, and Tony isn’t afraid because it’s a dream and it’s not like it’s the first time, eyes narrowing a moment down at Tony.  The tips of his fingers are cold where they spread past the metal casing of the reactor, coaxing a heady shudder out of Tony and a slow arch, the way it always does.  

“It hurts,” he says again and tangles his fingers into Loki hair and brings him down because _it’s true_ , having lost this man he barely knows more than in wisps of memory and phantoms of fantasy _hurts_ , and it’s absurd but _it’s true_.

It’s the only thing he says that night and in the nights that follow, in the midst of skin and skin and skin and heat and heat and heat, but he gasps awake in his own bed every time, with nothing but the dull blue of his arc reactor, penthouse a silent gaping maw around him.  Ready to swallow him and the ache in his chest right up.

* * *

Thor sticks around after his mess in Greenwich.  He’s a great help to have, if a moderately mopey one, especially when hunting down famed beasts Thor has claimed to have bested before.  Even if HYDRA is more metaphorical than literal.  It counts.

They find the Glow Stick of Destiny.  It glows.  Jack-be-Quick and his freaky deaky sister show up, running real fast and messing with people’s heads, and Tony hears their sob story and hates himself more than he feels irritated by them.  

And Ultron.  There’s Ultron.  

There’s a city falling in on itself.  There’s a devil where Tony tried to make an angel.  J is gone, lost, forgotten in the matrix of Vision’s new mind.  

They survive.  Barely.  Tony traces a _v_ over his arc reactor over and over and over during the debriefing, after the horror, after the clean-up.  He’s been too busy to sleep.  Too exhausted to try.  Too haunted to dream.

He ends up passing out, face down, on a cot in one of the helicarrier’s bunks.  

He wakes to fingers fisted in his hair, wrenching his head back, and this isn’t the first time that’s happened either.  When this had all first started, the dreams were glorified hatefucking, which Tony hadn’t minded _at all_ despite the guilt-- so Tony’s feeling overwhelmed, drowning in his own shame; it’d only make sense that Loki would be furious with him.  That Tony would _want_ Loki to be furious with him.

It’s still the bunker, which is new.  Tony’s never had one of these dreams take place somewhere so real to him that wasn’t traced back to the first invasion.  The room is small, claustrophobically so, and Tony is honestly surprised that all eight-foot-fuckall of Loki doesn’t have to crouch to stand up straight in here until he remembers _oh, yes_ this is a dream.

“ _Who has touched your mind_?” he demands more than he asks, always has really, but Tony doesn’t really care.

He’s too busy being shocked.  

In all of their meetings, their trysts, their dalliances-- in every.  Last.  One of them-- Loki has never said more than Tony’s name.  At least, Tony doesn’t remember him ever saying more.  But dreams are foggy things, so he blinks past his shock and frowns real hard.

“No one,” he says.  

But then he knows.  He knows and it’s like a kick to the sternum or somewhere equally fucking awful because _of course._ Of _fucking_ course, that was what happened, not just some terrible flashback or vision of the future or PTSD moment of shock.  Wanda.

She’d gotten to everyone else.  Why not him?  Why not him _first_?

“ _Fuck!_ ”

And the fingers in his hair loosen and big hands pull him back and Tony goes because he hates to admit it but he wants to pretend this is real.  That Loki is there and Not Dead, even though they don’t even really like each other or know each other, but Tony has never felt more safe than in these dreams-- even when Loki wrapped his hands around his throat the first time, the fifth time, the twelfth time, Tony has never felt more safe.

They cradle one another on that tiny little cot, the longer they hold one another the more real it feels, but every once in awhile time will shift in a way that tells Tony it isn’t.  Shifts, subtle slides in reality, between being held and being held down.  Between the gentle rest of their foreheads together to the hazy rut of their hips.  Between the gasps and moans and sweet words of comfort Tony isn’t sure he wants to hear so his head keeps drowning them out with the other sounds.  Between being Not Alone and being alone.

“I’ll kill her,” Loki whispers between one of these slides-- holding him and shushing Tony as he shakes one moment, fucking into him long and lazy and hard the next-- lips pressed to Tony’s temple.  “I’ll rend the flesh from her very bones.”

Tony’s ashamed again.  That some part of him could feel so angry.  So furious.  

That some part of him would want that.

“No,” Tony tells Loki-- tells himself, really, honestly-- and buries in close, or clutches Loki’s shoulders, or leaves angry red lines down his back depending on the slide.  “No, don’t.”

And Loki pauses.  Whatever he’s doing, he pauses, and all of the worlds coalesce like a kaleidoscope before Tony, blurry around the edges while Loki looks down at him with that same narrow eyed regard the first time Tony spoke.

“I will not have you broken,” Loki says.

Tony’s head falls back, and he laughs and he laughs and he laughs.

“I already am.”

* * *

Things change.  

Tony starts putting more focus on the whole active duty non-combatant side of things.  The political side.  Starts trying to work through his issues before he can cause another disaster.  

The Avengers are fine without him, really.  Better.  Captain Sparkles does an ace damn job of whipping the new recruits into shape, and Tony still gets a giggle out of seeing Rhodey make faces at some of the exercises they’re expected to do, like he’s not a goddamn veteran.  Nat keeps him pleasantly up-to-date on things, even country bum Clint in his retirement, and he does the same for her.  

The dreams, though… those get wacky.  Tony should definitely be seeing someone about them, but he’s not, so instead he suffers through the wack and _what even_ with as much poise as he can muster.  Which is to say: not a lot.

Tony’s shockingly awkward when they aren’t just pawing at each other in his head, and he wonders if it’s some kind of old age performance issue subconscious thing-- which, just...   _Irony_.

But, yeah, no.  His steamy, steamy sex dreams have taken a turn for the mundane.  He wakes up one night and they’re in the middle of a game of _chess_.  

“What the _actual_ fuck?”

Loki just laughs at him and moves his piece, and Tony sighs and does the same.

Some nights they don’t say anything, or do anything, just lay next to one another and that’s okay.  They don’t have a great track record of speaking in the last two or three years anyway, but the not sexing is new-- but. Yeah.  It’s okay.  

Nice, even.

Then Tony has to go and awkward it up with his brain _actually_ malfunctioning, he swears, and he’s staring up at Loki when he blurts out the totally, completely, blatantly obvious: “Your eyes are really green.”

Loki lifts a brow.  “Really?”

Tony let’s out a disgruntled sound, squirms a bit-- and _oh yes good_ there’s one of those slides where Loki is doing more than just tracing figures and runes out over Tony’s skin and _oh hello_ that’s a kink he did not realize he had-- but then he snaps right back to himself and Loki’s dry smile and soft touch.  “Don’t mock me.”

“Me? _Never_.”

“Rude.  Here I was, trying to be nice.  Dick.”

“Do you like my green eyes, Anthony?”

“Yes.” Tony bites the inside of his cheek--

 _And_ _jesus fuck he does.  He does.  He really does.  He could’ve had this.  This could’ve been his._

\-- and Loki seems to blink in shock.  “Yes, I do.”

And it’s true.  He does like them.  He likes a lot of things about Loki, or his braindrain version of him, and Tony wonders sometimes during the day, during his waking hours, if Loki was like this at all.  If he was soft and quiet in his intensity, in his touches.  If he was rough, demanding, unforgiving in his sex.  If he would cradle Tony close if Tony asked-- or even, more often, when he didn’t-- and let Tony hold him in return.  If he would’ve liked the way Tony frequently curls over his back like a mini-human jetpack, or tucks his face against the hollow between collarbones and breathes deep, or presses Loki’s hand to the arc reactor like he can pretend there’s a mark still there and a soulmate still waiting for him.  

More, though, Tony likes the small things.  The minor things Tony’d noticed during their brief, awful, dreadful time in each other’s company.  The secret smiles, the wicked deftness of his long fingers, the brightness of his eyes, the serpentine certainty of his movements.  Though, perhaps, his favorite was this.  Right here. Catching him off guard.

That awkward fumble, that subtle widening of the eyes, that look of befuddlement.  

“You do?”

Tony musters up a lopsided thing of a smile.  “Always such the tone of surprise.”

And maybe after that, even though it hurts more than it feels good, Tony starts telling him other things he likes.  Between the mess of guilt and shame and not good things that have knotted in his chest behind the reactor, and the even bigger mess the shitstorm of Thaddeus fucking Ross being plucked up as SecState, letting himself have these soft moments-- quiet moments, hushed moments, easy moments-- gives him something to look forward to beyond the fever dreams of whipping up new tech or the challenge of balancing SI with superheroing and political minutia.

The fact that it isn’t real, that it’s just dreams upon dreams upon dreams, pains him more than he can say.  But Loki never seems to mind or notice or care.  Or, if he does, he’s fine with coaxing Tony into bed or into a strange quip of conversation that builds slow between the first time Tony tells him his eyes are pretty--

hushed whispers, confessions really, legs and fingers a tangle, words like ghosts on skin:

_Tell me about your most embarrassing moment.  Tell me about your favorite star.  Tell me about your mother.  Tell me about this scar, where it came from, where it’s been since.  Tell me about your life._

\--and now.

Then, of course, Thaddeus fucking Ross slaps the Accords down on his desk.  Tony takes one look and knows it will end in disaster, but his guilt is heavier than his wit, and he signs away himself before asking the team to do the same.  

And oh, of course of course _of course_ , everything falls to pretty little shambles and Tony can’t, for the fucking life of him, put them back together.  Slices himself open trying until he can’t try anymore, until Rhodey has fallen out of the sky, and he _screams_.

It isn’t until later, much later and much too late, like always--

_like always--_

while Tony is on his back in a bunker in Siberia, Steve’s shield discarded somewhere along with the rest of Tony’s beat up heart, that Loki appears.  

It’s as Tony’s sucking in sharp breath after breath, arc reactor flickering dangerously in his chest, and he thinks he’s probably delirious in his paralyzed state-- _vulnerable_ , some part of himself whispers; _one last golden egg_ , whispers another-- because there’s a swirl of light and a clash of sound and the smell of ozone is so overwhelming Tony nearly chokes on it.  Then Loki is there, but he isn’t the Loki Tony has been dreaming of even beyond the glamor of some old guy with an eyepatch to rival Nicky boy’s, but it’s still Loki.  Tony sobs.  

The glamor melts away as Loki kneels down next to him, blurring like so many of his dreams, a haze of a figure hovering above him.  Long fingers dig into his armor, rip it open with knowledge and with care, and Tony hiccups a sound.  A hand rests-- gentle, so _fucking_ gentle-- over his sputtering heart, over his dying light, and Loki stares down at him with wide, horrified eyes.

“It--” Tony hitches, clutching at Loki’s wrist, feeling the cool of his skin and the heady _thud_ of a pulse.  “It hurts.”

Those green green motherfucking green eyes narrow, just like before, and Loki’s mouth curls into something like a snarl.  He looks like a wolf, hungry for blood and towering over him, all nine-foot- _fuck_ of him.  For a moment, his fingers dig into the area around the edges of the casing in his chest, and Tony thinks _this is it, this is how I die, dreaming that my soulmate ripped my heart out_.

Then there is heat.  There is power.  Like someone is pressing a damn star into the place between his ribs, and Tony can taste it at the back of his mouth like licking a battery, the tips of his fingers and toes tingling.  His body bows up, an electric current rippling through him, and he gasps out a sound, a word, a name.  

Just like that, it’s over.  The arc reactor is cracked but thrumming away in his chest; Tony can feel it at humming away between his back molars.  He stares up with wide, wondering eyes, because Loki doesn’t disappear.  Loki doesn’t fade away or slip into shadows or mist or glowing green light.  

He stays, staring down at Tony with equally wide and perhaps a bit more wondering eyes, then leans down and presses a kiss to Tony’s forehead.  

Then Tony knows no more.

* * *

Tony has never been more infinitely grateful that the Cat in the Hat-- Cat in the Crown, maybe?-- stalked his metal ass out to the HYDRA base and stuck around after his embarrassing defeat at the hands of his ex-bff and a one-armed popsicle.  Like, seriously.  Tony probably would’ve frozen his metal ass off and his real one too if T’Challa hadn’t stuck around to see him to safety.  

For instance, instead of waking up in the destruction of his own armor with frostbite from hell, he wakes in a cozy little cot at the back of the Quinjet.  Everything else that follows is kind of expected: Zemo getting locked up; Tony finding his way back to civilization; casually secreting the schematics of the Raft Stevie’s way because, what, you’re surprised?  

It’s on a day, months after all of the bitter cold hell and the dying delusion of a soulmate who’s dead saving him, that Tony and Rhodey and Vision receive some visitors at the Compound.

The first clue is the clap of thunder.  It’s been months since Tony’s had a dream starring his favorite self-punishment-- he thinks some part of him has accepted that it’ll never be, he’s finally given up the literal ghost of him-- but Tony still remembers the meek look on Loki’s face, sitting shackled in the Quinjet, when Thor first landed atop it.  

Tony steps outside just as the blinding swirl of the Bifrost sears a mess of runes into his carefully manicured lawn, and Tony really needs to start charging Thor for this shit-- but that thought is cut off at the head when he catches sight of who has landed with Thor, surrounded by ozone and heat.  First, it’s a shock because _hello Bruce, where the hell have you been, having fun without me obviously._  Tony doesn’t hesitate to pull him close and hold him hard because Science Bros are for life, but his eyes are wide and locked on the other figure hovering at Thor’s flank.  

It’s obvious, he doesn’t know why he’s being so shady, we all know who it is-- but Tony can’t quite believe it.  

“Tony,” Thor says, voice low with warning and hammer held out like perhaps he means to use it to protect Loki, and Tony’s kinda shocked by Thor’s lack of luscious blonde locks and his brand new Bondi look he’s rocking.  “I must ask that you yield any ill will you may feel toward my brother--”

“Yeah, okay, listen Point Break,” Tony shakes his head, a hand at the back of Bruce’s neck, finding comfort in the way Bruce’s bigger hand has dug into the cotton of Tony’s absurdly out of place _I Hate Mornings_ sloth t-shirt considering they all look like they stepped out of a gladiatorial stadium.  “Let’s step inside, have some tea or coffee or, if you’re me, something way stronger and talk the talk.  There are eyes everywhere and I’m not overly fond of being watched.”

Thor blinks, but Bruce and Loki both seem amused enough.  He doesn’t wait, though, turning away from the burn marks in the grass with his arm slung over Bruce’s shoulders as he walks back toward the Compound’s entrance, mouth already running a mile a minute as Bruce goes easy and soft next to him like he hasn’t seen a friendly face in a long, long while.

When they’re inside, settled awkwardly at a long table, Tony goes about busying himself in the kitchen.  He’s steeping a big pot of the blackest tea he can find after five seconds of rummaging through a cabinet, fresh ground coffee settling into the French press, when he realizes his hands are shaking.  His heart is pounding.  He can taste coconut at the back of his throat.  

He presses a hand to the arc reactor, closes his eyes, and swallows.  His back is to them, and he can hear Thor and Bruce talking idly.  FRIDAY chimes overhead that she’s notified Rhodes and Vision about their guests and that they’re on their way down to the kitchen.  Tony tries not to sink into blind panic.  

Out on the lawn, he’d been joking about needing something stronger than coffee, but now that he’s standing here in the impossibility of it all, he decides that yeah, _fuck yeah_ , he needs something with a bit more kick and scratch and bite-- and, really, he needs to stop thinking about those kinds of things because the back of his neck heats up just at the hint.  His fingers are still trembling as he pulls out a bottle of very old, very good, scotch-whiskey.  The sound of glass on glass is too loud, even for him, and he very nearly stops breathing when there’s a very sudden and very cold press of fingers at his nape.

“Easy,” Loki says and Tony jerks back anyways.

He shakes out his hand, making a face when liquor spills out over his fingers, and narrows his eyes up at all ten-foot- _areyoufuckingkiddingme_ of Loki.  He isn’t like his dreams, not really; his hair is longer, perhaps even softer looking, and there is an age in his face and in his eyes Tony hasn’t really seen before, but he doesn’t imagine time and pain and distance has been overly kind to him either.  

Tony’s jaw twitches and his gaze strays, down over Loki’s new and improved clothes, and his breath catches on a laugh that isn’t quite a laugh.  “Nice digs.  Much less tie-me-up-tie-me-down of you.  Makeovers come free with dying?”

The way Loki’s mouth presses into a thin line is familiar in the same ways that it’s completely unfamiliar, and Tony _aches_.  “Anthony--”

“ _No_ ,” Tony slams the glass he’s clutching down onto the countertop, and he knows the sound is harsh enough to catch attention because it’s followed by the sound of chairs sliding across the floor.  “No, you don’t get to call me that.”

“Brother,” Thor’s voice comes steady, low again, with that same warning but in a different direction.

Bruce is there too.  “Tony?”

Loki seems to take a breath, and Tony remembers seeing him fight his instincts like this before a million and one times in his head when Tony pushed or pressed or prodded too hard, but it is another thing entirely to see it in the flesh.  “Anthony--”

“ _Stop it_.”

“--I am _sorry_.”

“Shut up,” Tony hisses, his teeth a snarl of white, glass shattering over the floor and spilling out amber when he throws it down.  “ _Shut up_.”

“I did not know,” Loki insists, boots grinding over the shards when he steps forward, and Tony steps back.  “Anthony, I did not _know_.”

And Tony knows.  He knows what he means, but that doesn’t make it any better.  If anything, it hurts worse, and Tony shakes his head in denial.  In rage.  In terror.  

“Tones?” Rhodey hobbles in, braced against a cane made specifically for him, brow pinched tight and expression tighter-- he’s the only one here that’s seen it, seen this, seen Tony lose himself to panic.  “Tones, man, I need you to breathe for me.”

And he does.  He sucks in one tight breath, then another, and nods his head and turns away because _fuck that_.  He can’t handle this.  Can’t handle his soulmate, his bonded, standing right in front of him after years of thinking he was dead, after years of thinking there was no one, after years of knowing he’d be alone forever.  

It’s too much.

Rhodey places a hand at his elbow, steadies him, and casts a shrewd look around the room.  “Which one of you fucked up?”

And Tony laughs.  One of those sharp things that seems like it won’t end until he’s a hollow husk, and Loki makes a noise that sounds more pained than anything Tony’s ever heard.  

“Coffee,” Tony croaks.  “I need coffee.”

Things settle then.  Drinks are served, lines are drawn, and Vision appears just in time to make Loki look incredibly uncomfortable in his own skin, eyes forever darting to and away from where the Mind Gem is resting.

They sit at the table, drinking and not talking, Thor and Loki on one side together while the rest of them line the other half.  A minute in, Tony starts tapping his fingers impatiently against the table top.  He ignores the way Loki’s mouth twitches at the sight.

“So,” Bruce clears his throat.  “Wanna tell us what’s happened here?”

“You mean the crude ass fuck fate seems intent on giving dry without the courtesy of a reach around by saddling me with Loki for a soulmate?” Tony asks, tone glib as he drinks his coffee that is more than coffee, enjoying the brief looks of accusatory horror it earns Loki across from him for a short moment.  “Or did you mean the fact that over half the team has fucked off to Wakanda and other parts unknown after the good ol’ boy decided rules and regulations can take a hike?”

Bruce takes a steadying breath, eyes closed for a second too long, and turns to Tony.  “What happened?”

And Tony tells them.  Lays it out with catchy infographics as provided by FRIDAY’s utterly wicked dark humor.  They each get their own paper copy of the Accords-- as they are-- and the Accords-- as they will be when Tony’s done with them-- and a summary of events that colors no one in particularly bright shades, other than maybe Rhodey, who takes it all in stride.  

He skims over Siberia.  Some things just don’t need to be talked about.  

Loki notices.  His shoulders tighten, lift up until they’re practically to his ears, eyes narrowed in that familiar, venomous rage and flickering between Tony’s face and the arc reactor glowing beneath his shirt.  

“Where,” he asks when Tony is done and the silence has weighed down heavy over their shoulders and Bruce is clutching at Tony’s knee under the table.  “Is Captain Rogers?”

“No,” Tony frowns his way.  “There will be no rending, flaying, or maiming.   _No_.”

Long fingers curl into fists over the table.  Thor blinks, big blue eyes wide and a bit awed as he looks between them, and he rests what can only be a tentative hand at Loki’s shoulder.  

“Peace, brother.” He says.  “I understand the urge to defend your bonded.  Now, though, is perhaps not the time.”

“Yeah, can we talk about that?” Rhodey asks, though it’s more directed at Tony than anyone else.  

“Nothing to talk about,” Tony shrugs a stiff shoulder.  “I don’t have a mark.  I don’t have a bonded.”

And there’s the rage Tony knows so well, has been on the sinfully wondrous end of a million and two times before, Loki’s hands slamming down so hard on the table that it groans.  “ _Do not deny me_.”

Tony rolls his eyes.  “Or _what_?”

It takes the wind right out of him.  He slumps, standing there shaking, and Tony’s palms itch because he wants nothing more than to reach out.  To touch, to feel, to take.  He curls his fingers in, crosses his arms over his chest, and takes a breath.

“Anthony, please.” Loki says into the quiet, fingers splayed out over the table between them.  “ _Please_.”

“Fine.”

And _hey_ , mouth, what the fuck?  The brain didn’t okay that.

“Fine,” Tony repeats, a bit more firm.  “This is me, not denying you, but this?”

He gestures between them with a haphazard hand because Tony has always been a little crazy and a lot insane-- and, yes, he knows what that sounds like-- so it really isn’t a surprise to anyone but maybe Loki.  His eyes do that subtle widening thing, that adorably terrible caught-off-guard _oh_ face.  

“This is not happening,” Tony says and feels something pull taut in his chest.  “I have enough to deal with, trying to get the political mess mopped up, and undoubtedly with whatever otherworldly news you are all bringing in your wake.  I have enough to deal with.”

He pushes to his feet.  Doesn’t miss the way all eyes are on him.  Doesn’t miss the green eyes staring at him with a hungry, gaping need.  Doesn’t miss the way it twists him all up inside.  

“And stay the fuck out of my head,” Tony snaps.

* * *

Loki stays the fuck out of his head.

Loki doesn't, however, leave Tony alone.  He lingers in all of Tony’s spaces.  Like a gnat.  Or a flea.  Or a mosquito.

Something that Tony wants to smack, anyway.

It doesn’t help that Tony kinda needs him and big brother Thor around, to figure out _what the fuck_  is going on in the other screwball realms and _what the fuck_ kinda trouble is headed their way and just generally _what the fuck_ .  Whatever time Tony doesn’t spend trying to fend of Ross and his inalienable Task Force is spent in the company of what remains of his little ragtag team of Avengers, plus one, trying to piece together just _what the fuck_ they’re going to do about harrowing news of Bigger and Badder things to come.

Like Tony needs something worse than what already is his life.  And really:

“ _What the fuck_ ,” he hisses as Thor lays out what he discovered on his merry little trip back to Godland, with the inclusion of the Infinity Gems.  “ _How_ is this my life?”

Vision looks like he might start laying out statistics Tony doesn’t need, so Rhodey cuts in.

“Well,” he says.  “You _are_ soulmated to a God.”

“Shut your pretty mouth, platypus.” Tony snaps, but there’s no venom because he’s too busy staring at the pretty, pretty graphics of tiny, little WMDs-- one of which is conveniently embedded in the head of his onetime best friend and caretaker, while the other is pulled from whatever pocket dimension Loki keeps in his coat when discussions begin-- to really place his attentions elsewhere.  “So we have two and he has…?”

“One, for now.” Thor says.

“But even that is one too many,” Loki adds with a grimace.  

Tony puffs out his cheeks.  “Power Stone, right?  Purple one?”

“Unfortunately.”

“And the red one?” Tony asks Thor.

“With the Collector.” Thor breathes.  “Safe, for now.  Thanos has his eyes one Midgard.”

“Because we have two of his favorite, shiny toys.” Tony bobs his head.  “I can see why.”

“Three,” Bruce chimes.  “There are three on earth, right?”

Tony slumps down, head against the glass tabletop, and groans.  

They tell them everything that they know-- Mind Gem is with Viz, Space Gem is with Loki and Thor, Time Gem is secure in a temple protected by more people who use magic, and Tony kinda hates that because _magic_ but _hey, I know that guy, he recommended my heart surgeon before I decided the arc reactor isn’t going anywhere_ \-- and Tony tells them everything that he knows-- because as much as Vision is his own person, he’s still a little bit JARVIS, and they have analyzed the _shit_ out of the Mind Gem and what it can do; better yet, they’ve taken what they’ve learned and applied it to data they have on the Space Gem along the way, so they’ve actually accumulated quite a few numbers to work with-- and ultimately, they all learn a little bit more and are extra exhausted by the end of the day.  

Three Stones against one does not a successful battle make, no matter how high the statistical probability.  Especially not against the Mad Titan.

If anything, it makes them the biggest target.  Which, is worrisome, but Tony is tired and Thor and Loki both assure them all that Thanos is a long ways off.  Preparation is important, but nothing is written in stone yet.  They can’t relax, necessarily, because imminent doom.  But they have time.  

Which is good because Tony will rip his own arc reactor out before calling Steve and co up.   _He_ needs time, to come to terms with what needs to be done, and to set things right before they get even messier.

When their four day long powwow is done and over-- _for now_ \-- Tony takes his leave of all of them for some very much needed alone time that includes himself, a bottle of Bowmore that’s over fifty years old and worth every damn penny, and the hiccuping guitar riff of Eddie Van Halen.  He’s staring out one of the massive, re-enforced, double pane windows--just because something is safe, doesn’t mean it can’t also be architecturally gorgeous-- that overlooks the forest surrounding the Compound, a hand tucked into the pocket of his slacks while the other dangles a half-empty glass somewhere past his hip, knocking occasionally against his thigh.  It isn’t quite winter, yet, but the nights have been getting colder.  Tony likes it because it gives him an excuse to wear layers.

It’s too late for anyone else to be up.  Even Vision has gone into one of those meditative trances he sometimes floats in-- his _idle mode_ , Tony calls it.  

It’s too early for anyone to be up yet; though the sky might be getting lighter beyond the silhouette of black trees jutting up jagged into the night sky.  Either that, or Tony is more drunk than he thought.

Point is: no one else should be up.

“Boss,” FRIDAY chimes overhead.

And yet.

Tony breathes in, long and deep, only to sigh in a rush and bring his glass to his lips in order to down some much needed liquid courage.  The Bowmore is good; malty and sweet where it needs to be, smokey and defined where it isn’t.  It’s old and it cost Tony a small house to win it in auction.  Eddie’s singing about trouble--

_I think you’re headed for a whole lotta trouble_

_\--_ and Tony doesn’t think he’s wrong.  In fact, he’s probably very right.

He blinks up from where he’s staring out across the manicured lawn and the shadow of trees, and even in the dim light of the room Tony can see Loki’s eyes reflect off the glass and back at him.  He doesn’t turn, but he watches.  Watches Loki prowl close, like Tony might spook any second, and he’s really probably definitely not wrong about that.

“Anthony--”

“Hope you aren’t planning on trying to throw me through this,” Tony reaches out and raps the backs of his knuckles against the glass.  “It’s reinforced.  Won’t shatter.  I’ll just bounce off like a ball.”

Loki falters.

Tony twists to face him, blinking and guileless.  “Unless you’d like to see that in action?”

Letting out a tremendous breath, Loki shakes his head.  “I am not here for… No.”

“Oh, yeah?  Whatcha here for then, sweetheart?” Tony grins, unkind and sharp, when Loki flinches.  “Cuz I gotta tell you, getting thrown through a window is looking better and better.”

Loki’s jaw sets and he stands up impossibly taller and Tony wants to lug his drink at him, cost be damned, but he just tips his head back in equal defiance.  “I would speak with you, if you would allow it.”

“Speak, then.”

Loki bristles.  Tony has always had a knack at crawling right under people’s skin.  It’s kind of where he lives.

Then, he visibly reigns himself in, and Tony pretty much wants to throw an entire tantrum-- foot stomping and all.

“When I first touched you, I was not in my right mind.” Loki confesses.  

Tony gives him a _look_.

Holding up his hands, Loki nods.  “You are right.  I was aware, I made the decisions, but you have seen into the Void and you know that there was something far bigger hiding in the shadows than myself.  I was not in my right mind; I would not have thrown you if I was.”

Snorting, Tony takes a pull from his drink, and Loki’s eyes are alight as he watches his throat work.

“Choked you, perhaps.” Loki adds and Tony nearly snorts up his drink.  “But I wouldn’t have risked throwing you.”

“Rude.”

Loki grins.  “Yes.”

“I’m still a little lost as to _what the fuck you want_.”

Loki’s features settle, sober, and he takes another slow step closer-- eating up the space between them with careful motions-- like Tony might bolt at any second.  

Which… not _wrong_.

“I have gone years without you,” Loki breathes, and Tony’s eyes are drawn to his jaw and the sinuous way he prowls closer and closer and closer.  “Years with only dreams of you.  Whispers.  A phantom pain of what is truly there.  Mostly due to my own machinations.  I have suffered.   _You_ have suffered.”

Suddenly, Tony’s mouth is dry as the Afghan desert.  He takes another drink and looks away.  Has to.

“I am finished with suffering, Anthony.”

Tony laughs, brittle and rough, meeting those green eyes with dark ones of his own.  “I’m not.”

“No,” Loki breathes, eyes dipping down to the glow of the arc reactor beneath the cotton of Tony’s shirt, and his fingers twitch.  “I suppose you are not.”

“Sorry, princess.” Tony grins with white teeth and scotch on his tongue.  “Damaged goods.  You won’t find your mark on me.”

Eyes flit up to meet his.  Loki closes that last bit of distance between them, and for the life of Tony he can’t push him away, not with the sun rising behind him or the world ending in front of him.  

A hand presses to his chest, just over his reactor.  It isn’t hard, but it is firm.  The fingers splay out.  A shock of energy rushes through Tony, tingling across his scalp, and he sucks in a sharp breath.  

“I do not need my mark on your skin to know that you are _mine_ ,” Loki hisses, other hand cradling the nape of Tony’s neck, Loki’s eyes wide and fervent now and _gods_ Tony wants to kiss him.  “Nor do I need it to know that I am yours.”

His glass clatters to the floor, scotch spilling out across the wood.  He surges forward, catches Loki by the shirtfront and hauls him close, their teeth clicking when their mouths meet.  

And it’s good.  Better than good, it’s _great_.  

Every moment, every dream, every glimmer of what this might be that he’d had in these last few years is nothing in comparison.  Nothing like having Loki pressed to him, holding him close and secure, licking his way into Tony’s mouth like he belongs there-- and, fuck, maybe he does.

Tony moans, fists a hand into Loki’s hair and clutches at his hip, stumbling into him.  He needs this.  He needs _Loki_.

And it’s _terrifying_.

It stops just as abruptly as it starts.  Tony jerks back with a hiss, face red, heart pounding in his ears.  He untangles himself, and he isn’t sure what hurts worse: the flicker of agony on Loki’s face or the fact that he lets him pull back.

“FRIDAY?”

“Yes, boss?”

“Please direct Loki to his rooms.”

“Of course.”

* * *

Inevitably, Tony has to make the call.  He can only put it off for so long, can only keep a world-ending secret to himself for so long before it becomes a liability.  

He’d rather not get blamed for something else, thanks.

“You don’t have to,” Rhodey tells him from the worktable, legs dangling down in the newest version of the braces Tony’s been tinkering with because that’s what he does when he doesn't want to think.  “I can.  Or Vision can.  Hell, send Thor to Wakanda.  Bet that would raise a few brows.”

“Honeybear,” Tony smiles.  “Light of my life.  That’s the _easy_ way out.”

It has been weeks.  Weeks of SI work, plotting with the Asgardian Wonder Twins, UN teleconferences, general daily life bullshit.  Weeks of avoiding any other kind of contact with Loki, who-- _surprise surprise_ \-- has backed off.  

Or is waiting in the wings for a sign of weakness.

Loki comes to him, after Rhodey has left the lab, and Tony’s a shaking mess on the floor because he can’t make a _damn phone call_ .   _Fuck_.

He does not say anything.  Does not touch him.  He picks up the dinky little flip phone that is just _offensive, seriously, Rogers_ and presses it to his ear.

“Captain,” he says in Tony’s voice, eyes never leaving Tony’s face.  “We have a problem.”

When he hangs up, Tony laughs half-hysteric into his palms.  

There is a rustle of movement, a groan of leather, and when he looks between the cage of his fingers, Loki is sitting in front of him on the floor-- looking just as tired as Tony feels.  He regards Tony quietly, head tilted over, forearms draped over the tops of his knees.  Elegant, even plopped on the floor of the workshop across from him.  

“Do you know what my mark means?” he asks.

“I know it was reversed.  I know it reflects my instability.  My _disease_.”

Loki’s eyes flutter, the only tick that shows he’s shocked, and then he’s all sharp teeth.  “You’ve been reading it backwards.”

His gaze flits down and lands-- _always always always_ \-- on his arc reactor.  

“You carry fire in your heart, Anthony Stark.  You burn, brighter than anything I’ve ever seen, so bright that sometimes you catch light.” Loki’s voice is almost gentle, eyes locking with his again.  “But you will _always_ emerge from the ashes.”

Tony hears a whisper-- _he’s wrong, he’s wrong, your rune is backwards, he’s wrong_ \-- but beneath that is another quiet murmur, something he thinks he’s always known but never been willing to believe-- _strength, power, knowledge, inspiration_ \-- and he shakes his head.  “You don’t even _know_ me.”

“No,” Loki admits.  “But my soul knows yours.  And yours mine.”

Tony searches his face.  Finds nothing.

“I have waited.  And it has been _agonizing_ .  But I will _wait_ , Anthony.”

Breath catching somewhere behind the reactor, Tony goes very still.  He realizes-- belatedly, to be honest, he should’ve known; _it’s been years_ \-- that Loki means it.  

“FRIDAY?” he croaks.

Loki flinches, already moving to stand, pulling away.  Tactical retreat.

“Yes, boss?”

Tony would do the same.

“Lock down the lab.  No one in, no one out.”

Loki freezes as the walls grow an opaque color, misting over as the lights shutter and dim.  He stares, half risen, chest heaving now.  

“Do not give me false hope,” he warns.  “I will not hesitate to tear this place down to its foundations.”

Tony is already shaking his head, fingers still trembling from the panic of Cap and Co on the horizon, his hair a disheveled mess of dark curls.  “I can’t keep doing this.  We-- We need to work together.  I can’t do that if we keep up this little dance.  We aren’t leaving until this has settled.  One way or another.”

* * *

He isn’t sure what he expected.  Rage, probably.  Yelling.

They do a lot of that.

Tony blames him, lays into him really, about a lot of things.  About New York, about the dreams, about appearing to him in Siberia only to leave again.  Loki takes it and returns it, throws it back at him.  About why New York had to happen, about Tony’s own distance in their shared moments across the universe and his decisions to keep it that way for so long, about throwing away his life so many times that Loki thought he might have an aneurysm.  

But there’s a lot of other stuff too.  Quiet things.  Soft things.

Like the dreams.

_“I’m sorry about your mother.”_

_“When did you separate from that other woman?”_

_“Pretending to be the big Sky-Daddy wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be, huh?”_

_“I would burn them, to the very earth, for leaving you in such a state.”_

And:

“Did it hurt?” Tony asks on a whisper, leaned back against the bottom of the couch he’d had crammed into the corner, sipping on a ghastly green looking thing that DUMM-E handed him a few minutes before.  “Being so far away?”

“Every day.”

“Yeah,” Tony bobs his head.  “Yeah, me too.”

* * *

 

FRIDAY finally unlocks the doors hours later.  They’ve both exhausted themselves.  

When Loki stands, he offers his hand down to Tony.  

“You’re really tall,” Tony blurts as he stares at those long fingers, and Loki lifts a brow, eyes narrowing in that familiar way.  

“ _Really_?”

Grinning, Tony takes his hand; let’s himself be pulled to his feet.  “Don’t mock me.”

Loki blinks, and while his smile is slow coming, it still comes.  “Me?  Never.”

“Rude.”

He shuffles forward a step.  Loki regards him a moment, as if waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“I like it,” Tony breathes, hands tentative at Loki’s shoulders, but Loki is already turning to meet him fully, already reaching out to grasp him so tight he might not ever let go.  “How tall you are.  I like it.”

“Do you?” he asks on a whisper.

“Always such the tone of surprise,” and Tony curves a hand along Loki’s jaw and angles his face down and presses a kiss to his lips that is nothing like anything they’ve ever shared before and it is everything, everything, everything.

* * *

The kicker is: it doesn’t hurt one bit.


End file.
